The Price of Growing up in a Low-Income Neighborhood: A Scoping Review of Associated Depressive Symptoms and Other Mood Disorders Among Children and Adolescents

Background and Purpose: Neighborhoods as built and social environments have significant implications for mental as well as physical health. The field of social work understands the importance of the ecological systems model and the impact that the neighborhood, as a meso-level factor, plays on the micro. Additionally, social work understands how macro-level factors such as policies, racism, and sexism impact both meso systems and micro systems. Children raised in high-poverty neighborhoods, who are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC), have greater risk of adverse life outcomes than children raised in low-poverty neighborhoods and adults who move into a high-poverty neighborhood from a better-resourced neighborhood. Gentrification of a neighborhood is also salient when examining health outcomes given that neighborhood contexts shift around a child. This scoping review describes, synthesizes, and critiques literature on the relationship between neighborhood poverty/neighborhood gentrification and depressive symptoms in U.S. children ages 3-17 years with particular attention to the various ways neighborhood poverty/neighborhood gentrification has been measured.

Methods: Following Cochrane guidelines for scoping reviews, seven databases and grey literature were searched resulting in 1,435 initial articles that were title and full-abstract screened. The target population was children and adolescents ages 3-17 years living in the U.S. at the time of the initial study. If the study was longitudinal or retrospective, participants must have been children/adolescents at baseline but could have reached age 18 or older during the study. Given the history of structural racism in the creation of U.S. neighborhoods, inclusion criteria required that study samples be racially diverse or majority BIPOC.

Results: After screening, 17 studies were included (total n=122,089). Fourteen studies found significant direct associations between neighborhood poverty/neighborhood gentrification and child depression. Twelve studies found significant direct associations between neighborhood poverty/neighborhood gentrification and depression. Of the three studies that utilized longitudinal designs, all found significant results indicating that childhood neighborhood poverty/neighborhood gentrification may have a lagged effect in that depression may show up later in life. Latine youth consistently had higher rates of depression than other racial/ethnic groups, except that those living in neighborhoods with a high concentration of Latine residents had a lower rate of depression than their White counterparts.

Conclusions and Implications : Most included studies indicated that neighborhood poverty/neighborhood gentrification is associated with child depression. Policies that reduce neighborhood disparities and gentrification are needed across the U.S. as are policies that specifically address depression among Latine youth. Neighborhood poverty and gentrification require further examination as social determinants of other mental health outcomes (e.g., anxiety?) given their impact on child depressive symptoms. Social work researchers should continue to study neighborhood characteristics as determinants of mental health. Social workers who provide mental health training should continue to highlight the importance of neighborhood history and the socioeconomic and racial segregation still prevalent in societies today.